When this greets you daily in Naples:

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Naples is a crazy place. And I mean that in the sense of "insane; without sense." Things really tend not to make sense.

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1. When you arrive, get away from the train station as fast as you can. Not because it's the world's most dangerous place, or anything (or the safest), but just because it's really not pretty there.

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Now that I have left the (usually) wide boulevards of Rome for the (often) narrow alleys of Naples, I feel somewhat better qualified to give a list of places you MUST eat at in Rome. If you're anything like me, after all, you plan your trips around food—i.e., "Well, if we go to THIS museum, we're near THAT amazing gelateria, soooo..."

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With considerable pride I can say that I made it through college, college theater, studying abroad in Paris, moving to New York, my first job in New York, and grad school without developing a coffee addiction. Now, of course, I’m in Italy, where coffee is a national pasttime, but I still think that I’ll be able to get away with it and have no withdrawal back in the States.

Here’s why: the coffee is too darn delicious here. “But Michelle,” I hear you say to the screen, “if it’s so delicious, how will you be able to help but get addicted?” It’s TOO delicious—back in the States there will be no equivalent, so technically hooked or not, I’m going to have to go cold turkey.

Still, I've always been appreciative of food-related things with a ton of rules. Like, for example, how really snooty wine drinkers will raise one eyebrow at you if you state that “white wines go with fish, red with red meat” and say something like, “well, there are light reds, and heavy whites, so...” Well. Obviously how I’ve just described it is annoying and condescending, but I like this idea that certain things we put in our bodies have secret rules that you have to learn in order to properly enjoy them. It’s like food speakeasies!

This is how coffee is in Rome: it’s not just about getting some caffeine or having something sweet in the afternoon. Oh no, the rules are in force. A caffe is an espresso (and an espresso is an American word). No cappuccinos after noon (which is annoying when it’s all you want at 1pm after you’ve rolled out of bed post-intense nightlife researching). You can get a caffe freddo, but the freddo is really just slightly cooler than room temperature. Some places serve coffee pre-sweetened. I still don’t really know what a macchiato is here, but I will investigate tomorrow morning.

There is also the granita, which is coffee-infused ice shavings, usually with (un)healthy amounts of whipped cream (the best one I’ve had was an Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè near the Pantheon). Man, that thing will tweak you out. Coffee + sugar + whipped cream = accomplishing way more writing than should be humanly possible in one hour. It also = major sugar/caffeine crash, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. And that kind of crash I will definitely NOT miss when I return to my humble, tea-drinking ways.